Your world gets much smaller when your child is in the hospital, and everything that you thought were problems takes a backseat to the status updates for that little guy laying in bed with a million and one probes connected to him.

This morning we checked Matthew in at All Children’s Hopsital down in St. Pete for what was supposed to be an easy, in and out surgery to 1) repair a hernia that he’s had since birth but couldn’t be fixed because he was in the NICU, and 2) get his circumcision, for the same reason.

The surgery itself actually went great, however he ended up having some troubles afterwards with the anesthesia affecting his oxygen levels … the same thing that kept him in the NICU longer than his brother … as so as a result, they wanted to keep him overnight just to make sure that everything stabilized properly once the anesthesia had worked its way out of his system.

As I was driving back and forth from St. Pete to Tampa running errands and picking up Christopher from school while Sara stayed at the hospital, in a way it took me back to when all three boys were in the NICU and how absolutely upside-down those experiences temporarily made our lives. Because in one way, in order to remain positive you tell yourself that everything is going to be fine and that they have all of the best tools and doctors here to help your kid get better…

…but then you walk through the halls and you see all of those other sick kids, and you remember that not all of them are going to get better.

Today we figured that Matthew would be in and out in about six hours, and by the time I could get to the hospital after dropping Christopher off for school, he’d already finished and was struggling in recovery.

Still, I’ve got to say that All Children’s is a very comforting place, and as I brought Christopher back to visit his little brother, he had a blast pointing out all of the colorful animals that we passed walking the halls, and the art, and the incredibly friendly employees and volunteers. It all helps to make a traumatic experience a little bit easier, and for that I can only express immense gratitude.

Tonight will actually be the second night that Matthew and Sara slept away from home because they stayed at her sister’s place last night which is a lot closer to the hospital, but hopefully by the time I wake up tomorrow everything will be all better, they’ll have weaned Matthew back off of his oxygen and he’ll have discharge papers ready to go in his tiny, little hands!